Mental Health, the New Public Health Frontier

MENTAL diseases are said to be responsible for as much time lost in hospitals as all other diseases combined.' But time lost in hospitals is of little significance compared with the havoc such disorders create in the lives of individuals and in society. Patients in mental disease hospitals represent only a small fraction of the victims of mental disorder in the community. Newspapers, medical journals, court records, accounts of business failures, lists of suicides and divorces-in a word all the information available on the more melancholy aspects of our society -must be examined to obtain an insight into the possible or probable consequences of mental disorder. For mental health concerns the impact of life on man, his success in coming to terms with his environment, while his failure to adjust or to adapt is told in the series of mental disorders to which he is subject. At this stage in our evolution, in this century of technical progress, turmoil, and confusion, we are coming to the end of geographical and physical exploration and approaching the frontier of the mind. With instinctive wisdom the poet senses our predicament

Environmental health · Frontier · Mental health · Political science · Psychiatry · Public health · Medicine · Mental Health and Psychiatry · Nursing · Psychology

• Efforts to Define and Help the Health Officer to Fulfill His Role in Mental Health Programs

  J W R Norton, Calvin C Applewhite et al.•American Journal of Public Health…•1957

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• The World Health Organization and the contested beginnings of psychiatric epidemiology as an international discipline

  A M Lovell•International Journal of…•2014

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